


~ Shadow Blood ~

by Spiced_Wine



Series: Between War and Empire [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Action/Adventure, Dark Prince ‘verse, Gen, Horror, M/M, Magnificat of the Damned ‘verse, Post War of the Ring, Unresolved Sexual Tension, vampire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:29:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiced_Wine/pseuds/Spiced_Wine
Summary: In the years between the end of the War of the Ring and his travelling far south to Tanith (as told in Dark Lands) Vanimöré and Elgalad acted as caravan guards.Vanimöré thought of the time as a ‘Pause between two breaths’, a time of learning to live with his new freedom, his ascension to Godhood, and also learning to live with Elgalad, whom he loved but refused to touch.It was a time of freedom, but not always of peace. Vanimöré was temperamentally unsuited to periods of idleness.Returning to Esgaroth one autumn, he hears rumours of a ‘blood-drinker’ haunting the Ered Mithrim north of the Greenwood.Set after Angmar as told in Magnificat of the Damned Book IV.
Series: Between War and Empire [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185863
Comments: 32
Kudos: 11





	1. Rumours of Blood

  
  
  
  
  
  


**~ Rumours of Blood ~**

~ Contented and wine-flushed, Edric smiled over the family gathering.  
It had become tradition for him to hold a homecoming feast on his return from a summer of profitable trading in Umbar. The bounty of autumn was served with ale, cyser and good wine.

Edric, having remarried last midwinter after a long widowhood, had handed his house in Dale to his sons and settled with his new wife in Esgaroth. Ilsura, seated beside him in a gown of amber-coloured wool, was a widow herself, and the daughter of a vintner whose great grandfather had settled in the town from Dowinion. There was still something of the far and fabled East in Ilsura’s smooth, golden face and long-lidded eyes. Edric, having courted her for several years, was now a happy man.

She returned his smile and the fire-opal necklace he had brought back for her glowed in the lamplight. The stones were from the south of Harad but it was the Dwarves of Erebor who had fashioned the necklace. A fitting adornment.

Edric’s eyes passed over the gathering and stilled.  
It was not good etiquette to allow common caravan guards a place at table. But there was nothing in the least common about his two guards.  
One was Elf of the Great Wood with shimmering silver hair, the other was an Elf too, or at least possessed Elven blood, but the two could hardly be more unalike. Both owned the diamond-hard, unearthly beauty of Elves, but where Elgalad was luminous and graceful, Vanimöré was all black steel. His eyes were deep purple, brilliant and hard as volcanic glass. He knew the people of the Harad, their tongues and customs, and Edric admitted he would not have prospered as quickly without Vanimöré’s knowledge.

At the beginning, he had thought the two lovers but Ilsura had said, last winter, ‘No, there is too much tension between them.’ She noticed far more than he, but even he could see that Vanimöré carried himself like a king. The only Elven king Edric knew of was Thranduil of the Great Wood who had ruled there time out of mind.

‘Do you know he speaks Rhûnaic?’ Ilsura had said and nodded. She did not herself speak the tongue of her forbears but, when the Dorwinion traders came with their wine, Vanimöré used their own language to converse with them.

One thing was definitely known: After the War, Vanimöré had been here in the North, hunting orcs with such ferocity that he became known as the Orc Slayer. Edric did not fault him for that, who would? There had been many deaths, including Dáin, the Dwarf king of Erebor, and Brand, Lord of Dale. Erebor had fared better, being built on the water and cutting its bridge. Many of the townsfolk had already taken the offer of refuge in Erebor, but there had still been losses.

During the autumn and winter when their service was not required, Vanimöré and Elgalad had a habit of vanishing. Elgalad, it was known, visited the Great Wood and Vanimöré did not accompany him. At other times, however, both were gone fro months, returning when the first green dusted the trees and as Edric prepared for his long journey to Umbar. For the first year they had accepted Edric’s offer of accommodation but after, lodged in Esgaroth at a quiet inn. They would go there tonight, when the feast was over.

The two sat apart at a small table, but there was nothing in that position or their demeanours to suggest that they were deliberately being placed out of the way. Vanimöré had, in fact, requested it. They were still subject to stares from ill-bred gawpers, Edric acknowledged with annoyance, even his own relatives, although Vanimöré appeared unconcerned, if he even noticed.

He sat at the small table like a king in his court, his presence reversing the visual impression until it was he and Elgalad who sat above the salt, with the family below.

Ilsura, an excellent hostess, ensured that the two were well-supplied with food and drink but they ate sparingly, slowly, pausing to sip their wine and talk quietly. Tonight, Vanimöré wore his hair in a great coil, a fashion that ought to have looked feminine but somehow did not. He always, thought Edric, looked supremely dangerous. He dressed in black leather with no jewel or ornament and reminded Edric of nothing so much as a great black wolf.

At last, the feast wound to its close and the harpist hired for the evening, packed his lap-harp into its wrappings and took a long drink of wine. The servants cleared the tables, and the family chatted over the empty tables, finishing the last of their goblets.

‘But it is _true_ , Tellan’s father had it from that old trapper —‘

There was a gust of good-natured laughter. The speaker was Stefn, Edric’s grandson, a promising lad. His voice was breaking which embarrassed him, but despite the merriment, he rose and thumped the table. Someone had allowed him a sip too much of ale, it seemed.

His sister Cwen, a year older and already a lovely young woman, cuffed the back of his head with familiar and affectionate superiority.  
‘There is no such thing as blood-drinkers, you idiot.’

‘Oh, is there not?’ Stefn challenged and, pot-valiant, turned his head toward the corner where Vanimöré and Elgalad sat silent. ‘You would know, sirs.’

It was remarkable (or perhaps not) how silence fell when Vanimöré’s attention was gained. Even in Esgaroth, long accustomed to the arrival of Elves to pole wine barrels up the Forest River, Vanimöré was a figure people tended to avoid. Edric had seen it now countless times. If he walked down a street, here or as far as Umbar, he was made way for, when he spoke, people listened.

‘There have been such creatures in the past, yes,’ he replied, in that deep, accented voice. ‘Where didst thou hear of such a thing?’

Stefn’s freckled face was now splotched with hectic red and his father replied for him: ‘A trapper in the First Flagon; you know how they drink when they come in from the backlands. Some town up in the Grey Mountains, I think...’

‘Ah, yes of course.’ Vanimöré rose. He cast a look over the hall and then inclined his head to Edric and Ilruna. ‘We will take our leave now. I thank thee for the hospitality.’

Elgalad added his sweet, lovely smile to the thanks and they turned to the door. Edric had initially been concerned that their presence might have an affect on the women of his family, but there was, after all, a reason that no liaisons occurred between the Wood-Elves and the town: there was simply too much _difference._

‘You cannot bed starlight,’ his wife had said. ‘Nor would a woman take that black dagger to her chest.’

Aye, she had the right of it.

OooOooO

~ The streets of Esgaroth were quiet as midnight approached. Many windows were shuttered, but light still spilled from some of the taverns.

They did not return to their lodgings at once, but walked some way out onto the land bridge and leaned on the railings listening to the cry of night birds, the slap of water around the great wooden pilings. The air held the gentle rot of early autumn, of leaves dying in a riot of colours and here, woodsmoke from the town. Northern scents, so different to the salt-and-spice of Umbar or the hot, sun-shattered rock of Harondor.  
The breeze stirred Elgalad’s hair.

 _And soon, there will be snowflakes in it. Whiteness added to purity._  
‘The forest, tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Elgalad nodded, and did not invite him to come. While Thranduil and Vanimöré had reached a certain prickly amity, the King could not speak for all his people. ‘And th-then?’

‘Yes, and then.’ They turned and walked back. ‘What wouldst thou wish to do, my dear?’

‘Elladan and Elrohir are st-still in Imladris.’

‘So they are.’ Vanimöré smiled. Their shoulders touched and the need roused by that slight pressure was, by now, a familiar ache, but when Vanimöré paused and looked at Elgalad’s face in the night, he stamped down upon it as he had countless times before. He knew Elgalad tempted him, either deliberately or subconsciously, and he believed Elgalad loved him, but for the wrong reasons. _Just as I love him for all the wrong reasons. He is the innocence I long to reclaim and, since that is impossible, I yearn to hold it._

He turned down a narrow wharf-side street, poorly lit.  
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The First Flagon.’

The inn was mildly notorious, and had a reputation for fights. The few criminals and outcasts of Esgaroth might be found there, according to the Watch. By the smell of beer-soaked rushes and pipe-weed, the clamour of voices within, the night was still young in the First Flagon.

‘The trapper?’ Elgalad said. ‘Thou didst s-say very little. I wondered. The ghouls of D-Dol Guldur—‘

‘— were destroyed by Galadriel and Thranduil, or hunted down. And they are not blood drinkers.’ Vanimöré set his booted foot on the step and smiled. ‘I did not want to give the boy nightmares. But yes, I am curious. Shall we?’

Elgalad slanted him a wry smile. ‘Then coming this w-way was no accident?’

A wall of noise, of smoke, the stench of soiled rushes, slapped at their faces as they entered, and it vied with unwashed humanity, urine and faeces from the open latrine in the back. Vanimöré had smelt worse.

Men sprawled at tables, propped themselves at the long bar, a long plank laid over barrels. Platters of clean-picked waterfowl had been shoved aside or flung onto the floor. Two dogs of indeterminate ancestry gnawed at bones.

For a few heartbeats the noise was unabated then, slowly, it dropped like a stone into silence. A volley of bleary eyes turned in the direction of the newcomers. The tavern owner, a tall, man with a beard to rival a Dwarfs but far less well-tended, glared malevolently.  
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘We don’t serve your sort in here.’

Vanimöré came to the bar. ‘How fortunate for thee I do not require anything,’ he said. ‘But please do elaborate. My _sort._?’

‘Elves,’ one of the men muttered.

Vanimöré leaned over the ale-splashed bar top. ‘Interesting, at least marginally. But also beside the point. I am looking for the trapper who spoke of blood-drinkers in the mountains.’

The owner sneered, turned aside and spat. ‘Don’t know nothing about that.’ He reached behind the bar and brought out a heavy stick spiked with nails. ‘And I said we don’t serve your sort.’ His eyes blinked rapidly. Not as courageous as he looked.

‘I heard thee.’ Vanimöré shot out an arm and the man yelped, wringing his hand as the club was torn from his grasp. Vanimöré weighed it, then sent it sailing out of the door. He turned to face the mob, because by now it was a mob, if a rather poor one. Elgalad’s hands had gone to his knives, resting there, deceptively casual. Vanimöré drew his swords.  
‘Oh, _do_ try. Please.’

‘That’s the orc-killer that is,’ a voice slurred.

‘Bum boys,’ someone else snickered from a dark corner.

Vanimöré’s eyes narrowed. He briefly considered becoming annoyed and decided it was not worth it. He had, and not so long ago, rescued Elgalad from Esgaroth’s gaol when he was mistakenly arrested for something Vanimöré had done, and he did not want to go through that again. Anyhow, there were laws against killing people for an insult. Probably.  
‘Thou couldst not afford either of us, how lucky for us,’ he said dulcetly.

‘Out,’ swallowed the landlord, his face suffused with colour. ‘We ain’t orcs here.’

‘No? But how am I to tell when thou doth act and look like them?’ Vanimöré blazed a smile. ‘Ten in gold and two bottles of Red Harvest, to learn of the blood-drinker in the Grey Mountains. Fact, not fantasy. We lodge at the Silver Perch.’ He nodded to Elgalad who slipped in front of him, while Vanimöré spun, keeping the room in view, turning, turning, until they were at the door. A score of bloodshot eyes glowered, hands reaching for knives, but no-one moved.

The air, even in this poorer part of the town, was blessedly fresh after the inn’s reek. They maintained their watchful stance until the inn was lost to sight and they had crossed another bridge.

‘Will anyone come?’ Elgalad murmured.

‘For ten golds, and the wine, someone will.’ Vanimöré sheathed his swords but remained watchful. ‘The trapper, I hope, when he sobers up, and if anyone tells him.’ He winked. ‘I really do not think anyone else would want to. I have an excellent memory for faces. But it was not worth a fight, my dear. If we come upon any of them outside, however...’

Elgalad laughed softly. ‘They would be a poor challenge,’ he demurred.

‘I was jesting. Probably.’

Their rooms at the Perch were simple, but comfortable enough, though Vanimöré found all small spaces claustrophobic. But there was a window here at least. The chamber boasted a small fire, woollen rugs, a wash-bowl, chairs, and two comfortable beds. Guests might use a private outhouse for bathing. He had known worse.

The two of them did not share beds unless there was no other choice, which had occasionally happened on their travels and presented a challenge to Vanimöré. It would be too easy to reach out during the night and tumble into the act of sex.

Vanimöré was used to keeping a brutally hard rein on his desires. He sublimated them and could remain celibate for long periods of time. Elgalad was not the same; he had, quite naturally, lovers in the Wood. Vanimöré would have been surprised had he not. Virginity meant nothing to him; it was not a bodily condition, only one invented by men to set a price on untouched flesh. It could, however be a spiritual state. Or so Vanimöré was inclined to believe.

_My father gave me virgin to Melkor. I was virgin in that I knew nothing. I never saw it coming. I was a fool._

He had known _nothing._ But he had learned, quickly. And forever, the greatest damage was not to his body, but his mind. He had expected his father to help him. Remembering his naivety made him flinch.

 _All that hate. All that pain, like a running sore. I cannot inflict it on Elgalad._ Who might have had thousands of lovers and yet carried an air of being untouched.

Vanimöré had known some who would have wanted to break that, to mark it, use it, destroy it. He was not of that ilk.

_His skin feels like fresh marble unearthed from a quarry, with the stone dust still on it like silk._

He imagined his hands, stained with darkness, leaving marks on that whiteness.

He crooked an arm over his eyes. He barely needed sleep.

He tried to sleep.

**  
  
**

OooOooO

~ The morning spilled across the world under cloud thin and pale as worn linen. Under it, the wind hurried up from the south to ruffle the lake. Vanimöré walked with Elgalad from the town, and westward through the grasslands that spread toward the wall of the Greenwood.

At length they halted. Elgalad smiled at him, a touch on the heart.  
‘A sennight,’ he said.

‘Do not hurry on my account,’ Vanimöré said, as he always did. ‘They are thy people.’

‘Thou art.’ Elgalad leaned forward quickly, kissed him on the mouth. Dark lashes shadowed his eyes as he drew back, then he turned and walked away. Vanimöré watched his straight back, his lithe graceful walk, and the lift of the silver hair in the wind until it seemed to melt into the long, summer-bleached grasses of the plain.

_The Light to my Darkness. Mine, or so he would have it, but not mine to use, not to own. To protect, and from myself._

He turned, settled his pack more firmly and ran several miles until he reached a quiet little cove on the lake. Stripping off his clothes he waded in and swam, striking out from the shore to deep water, letting the choppy little wavelets break over him.

 _A pause between two breaths._ So he thought of this time, after the War of the Ring and his father’s fall.  
He was, for the first time since his birth, free, bound to no-one’s will. It was still difficult — almost impossible — to accept such a profound change.

_And yet, I find it even harder to accept that my father is gone._

He would wake at night, sometimes, every sense snapped to alertness, thinking he had heard Sauron’s voice in his mind, felt the pull of the blood, the irrefusable command which now he believed (hoped) he could refuse. There was silence.

But from another direction there was a constant awareness and tension. It came from far in the East in the new (or ancient) Noldorin kingdom of New Cuivíenen where Fëanor reborn ruled as High King, sanctified by Eru, supported by Glorfindel.

Vanimöré had walked away from their blood-link, yet it was unmistakably there and Fëanor’s extended hand had not yet dropped away.

_For that alone, Fëanor, I would love thee, but it cannot be._

This, then, explained how, when he had first seen Maglor in Barad-dûr, tied to a wheel, unconscious in his torment, then, even then, Vanimöré’s blood had burned. It continued to burn.

_But Fëanor cannot understand. If I am anything, it is Sauron’s son._

And, as Sauron’s son, there was no place for him in New Cuivíenen, nor with the Elves. There were enough unhealed wounds among the Noldor without Vanimöré adding to them with his presence.

 _And what, anyhow, would I_ do _there_?

He had attempted to imagine himself living among the Elves, at peace, without responsibility and duty and his imagination utterly failed. He had been born out of war and blood and dark sorcery, and that ran (still) in his veins — that, and the power, now, of a God.

_And so, I must make my own future, my own destiny._

Thus, these years were ones of finding some kind of equilibrium and, more than anything perhaps, in this yearly return to the North, they were for Elgalad. Vanimöré did not wish to take him far from his people and the lands he knew.  
In the future, Vanimöré intended to travel far south and, because he knew nothing else, to ultimately rule as he had Sud Sicanna. To that city, he would not return; it was marred by memories of his usage by Dana; his travels would take him further, to lands he had never seen before. It was the one aspect of his service to Sauron in which he found genuine pleasure: visiting different lands, tribes, peoples. It had been his first true taste of freedom, the first evidence there was such a thing, even if not for him, yet it existed.

But for now this time. A time of...waiting.

When he returned to the town, the bridge was already busy with farmers crossing to attend their strips of cultivated land around the shore. One could not live on fish alone, Vanimöré mused; here were crops and henhouses, geese and ducks, a few cattle, wooden huts for those who guarded them, threshing barns and, a league or so up the river, a mill. The population of Esgaroth grew by the day. Soon those fields and huts and barns would spread as the virgin soil was broken and fertilised or built upon.

A party of dwarves crossed to the town on sturdy ponies, beards entwined with gold and copper. Fleets of fishing boats were out on the shining water. The market on Gathering Street was bustling. Women with rush baskets moved among the stalls, chatting to each other, haggling. children ducked between them, playing obscure games with much laughter or grouped hopefully around sweetmeat sellers.

Vanimöré drew the hood of his cloak over his head, and detoured back to the inn through narrow back alleys. In his room, he laid out his swords, daggers and throwing knives and applied himself to the necessary, mindless task of sharpening them. He had passed through _Fos Almir_ and become a God, but until the very last he had resisted, indeed rejected the power of his father’s blood. It was one of the ways he defied Sauron, one of the few ways open to him.

He had surrendered to it to bring the Silmaril of the Oceans from the deeps and burn a way into Valinor, but he was a warrior, and that was not something he would ever relinquish. When it came to battle, it would be his weapons he reached for first, not the waiting power within. He felt it settled there, tremendous, latent but it troubled him for there was no newness to the sensation; it was familiar as a well-worn pair of boots. _And old. Ancient._

_It is as if it has always been within me._

But that was nonsensical. Perhaps it was only his father’s blood denied for thousands of years and, at last, fully recognised.

_My father._

So overwhelmingly absent that he must have been cast into the Void. But some of the Noldor had been banished to the Dark and it had not devoured them. Vanimöré doubted very much if it would unmake Sauron.

He had no desire to see if he could reach out to Sauron and believed there was no need. Oftentimes it seemed as if he might look around to see his father standing behind him. His presence was that close.

The scrape of the whetstone was a rhythmic, almost soothing counterpoint to the coming and goings of patrons below. He smelt cooking as the supper hour approached, and heard a door close, heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

‘Sir?’ The landlord entered at Vanimöré’s word. ‘Someone asking to see you. An old trapper by the name of Reed. Shall I send him about his business?’

‘I was expecting someone.’ Vanimöré rose. ‘I will see him.’

‘Will you take supper?’

‘Yes. Bring something to the parlour, and three bottles of Red Harvest. The Sunset Year, I think.’

OooOoo

~ Reed the trapper was lean, burnt by sun and wind to the colour of leather. His face was hard as wood and carved with deep lines. He might overindulge in Esgaroth, but this was a man of the wild lands who knew how to survive, Vanimöré thought. His eyes, though now bloodshot, were a faded blue that had stared into many far distances.

Trappers were a strange, solitary folk and seemed to prefer it that way, dipping a toe into civilisation only when they bought down their pelts from the mountains before returning with some relief to the wilderness. Those Vanimöré had come into contact with tended to be garrulous in company as if making up for long periods with no-one to talk to, and Reed was no exception. But his was no empty chatter, there was a keen brain there; trappers were observant people. They needed to be.

‘Wrakyaburg, up by the River Greylin.’ Reed expertly blew the froth from the dark Dwarven ale. ‘You know it, sir?’

‘I have never been there, but I know of it.’

‘Biggest settlement up there. Four, five hundred houses maybe, all behind a big stockade. Sheep mainly. Goats. Rich enough place, but a frontier town still. Always has been. Lake Town’s like Minas Tirith in comparison.’ He took a deep draught. ‘Market place for all that area, and the folk of the outlying steadings make for there if there’s trouble. Used to be in the old days. Orc raids from Gundabad.’ Vanimöré nodded. ‘But their walls are solid. An uncanny place though, them Mountains.’ He squinted. ‘Old ruins. No-one knows who built ‘em. Dark Woods, wild, cold rivers. And the mists that come down...’

‘I know,’ Vanimöré said.

The old man drank again, then packed his pipe, tamping it down. Taking a spill from the hearth, he applied it to the tobacco, and Vanimöré waited patiently until the pipe drew to Reed’s satisfaction. He exhaled a stream of fragrant blue smoke toward the ceiling.

The Perch was busy that evening, and Vanimöré had chosen to speak to Reed in the quieter parlour. A few Dwarves sat at one table over their meal; a well-dressed couple sipped mulled wine, and three older men frowned over a game of cards. From the larger room next door came the bustle of drinking and talking.

The fire crackled, carrying sparks and smoke up the chimney. Reed eased himself back in the chair.  
‘As I say, an uncanny place, and I’ve seen a few strange things in my life, sir.’

‘I believe thee.’

The old man cocked his head. ‘And so have you, I make no doubt. Well, Wrakyaburg is where I go for supplies when I’m up there. Sell them some furs, too. I was there in the spring, before I came down to Lake Town.’

The old man’s voice deepened, weaving with the snap and pop of the fire as he told of meeting a shepherd examining a dead ram. Wolves hunted the high lands, and when lambing time came in spring, the sheep were folded further down the mountains, nearer the town. There was no sign of wolf or black bear or any other predator but the dogs that shadowed the shepherds’ heels whined and would not approach the carcass. The only mark on it was as of a deep bite on the underside of the throat. Reed had remained to hear the tale, saying he would take it into the town, and the shepherd, cutting open the carcass had found no blood. None. It was drained.

It was not the first time this predator had struck, the shepherd said. It had begun in the autumn: sheep, a mountain goat, and that was only what had been found. There was no mass slaughter or depredation but it was the manner of the killing that troubled the townsfolk and steadings. The town’s Master had offered a reward but nothing had been found, then winter came down, with storm and rain and later, the snows. People stayed close to their homes in winter unless to collect firewood or see to their animals.

They hoped, Reed said, that the predator might have moved on. It had not, though evidence of its hunting did not come to light until the spring.

Then, as summer came in, it killed a man.

‘Was his wife found him,’ Reed said. ‘She’d had to bury him then walk to Wrakyaburg. Took the lass two days. The Master sent men back and they unearthed the body. Bite marks, all the blood drained, but worse. Broken bones, skull caved in. Whatever attacked him was strong, and savage.’

After Reed left with his wine and coin, Vanimöré climbed the stairs to his chamber and looked out of the window. The idle slap of water sounded from below, the tread of feet on wood. Rooflines jutted in a jumble, dark against the paler night sky.

Whatever roamed the Ered Mithrim was not any surviving ghoul out of Dol Guldur who ravaged bodies in their lust for flesh and dug corpses from graves. The attack on the man meant nothing — or everything.

‘Were the corpses not eaten by wolf or hill-fox?’ he had asked, and the old man shook his head.  
‘Left as they died. As if the meat were tainted.’

 _As it was._ Shadow Blood.

_Thuringwethil._

Sauron said she was slain by Eönwë during the War of Wrath. Vanimöré did not believe him but equally had not seen her after. Perhaps she had fled the war, or was indeed gone. It bore investigation.

There was another possibility, one more tragic, more unclean, but extremely rare.

‘She cannot breed,’ Sauron told him long ago. Neither could she. But there were ways to cast her shadow that did not involve death.

_’Her own blood,’ his father said. ‘Dropped into an open mouth, into a wound. Unlike her bite, a person may survive it. Then it becomes one with them, and — sometimes, very rarely — when a woman gives birth, the child carries the Shadow Blood.’_

_An experiment of thine?’_ Vanimöré himself was the result of a successful experiment after several failures.

_’Of course. She has little patience. She likes to instil terror and to feed. I needed a controlled situation. There were a few live births but they all died within a year or two. The blood is inimical, I believe.’_

Sauron had only ever told him what he wanted Vanimöré to know. Possibly there had been a more successful outcome. If not, then it was Thuringethil herself and it would be more than satisfying to end her wretched existence. Sauron had given him to her once. Restrained by his will, she was yet rapacious and bestial. He had been fevered for days after, until his blood burnt him clean of her infection.

OooOooO

~ Elgalad returned seven days later. He glowed with an inner pleasure Vanimöré had seen before. Smiling, he offed his pack and shook back his hair. New earrings glinted. A cascade of beech leaves. No, swan’s wings, beautifully etched from silver. He smelt of autumn, and clear spring water and his own light scent of hawthorn bloom.

‘How fares the Wood?’ Vanimöré asked.

‘Well, I thank thee. The K-King sends his respects.’

‘Does he?’ Vanimöré laughed.

‘And Bainalph.’

Bainalph. _Beautiful Swan._ And giver of those earrings. Prince of Alphgarth in the Great Wood. Deadly in battle and honey-sweet, wholly submissive in the bedchamber. Dangerously so. He could endure the _Anguish_ and push a man beyond the bounds of control.

‘How is he?’ Vanimöré had been mulling wine on the hearth and poured two cups.

‘He remains in Alphgarth, and d-does not visit the King’s Halls.’

‘Better for him that he does not,’ Vanimöré said hardly, for that tangled relationship with all its guilt and grief and lust was poison to both King and Prince. Bainalph needed — and deserved — more than hunger and hate. He flashed a look at Elgalad who gave a veiled little smile. Well. It was hard to imagine Elgalad as being the dominant one in sex, but appearances, as he well knew, were deceptive.

‘Thranduil and Bainalph had both heard of the blood-drinker from the North-wardens.’ Elgalad took the offered glass of wine and sat down in one of the wooden chairs, stretching out his long booted legs. Vanimöré followed their slim, muscular line with his glance. A fine flush mantled Elgalad’s high cheeks.  
‘There were no signs it entered th-the Wood. But they h-hunted. Nothing was found but they _felt_...’

‘Yes?’

‘A sense of shadow. In th-the woods, by the streams. A mist th-that came down.’ He sipped wine and his eyes lifted over the rim of the goblet. ‘A n-name occurs to me.’

Vanimöré nodded. He had told Elgalad the old tales long ago, and he would have learned more in the Wood.  
‘Sauron said she was killed in the War of Wrath.’ He shrugged. ‘He may have lied of course.’

‘He saved thy l-life,’ Elgalad murmured, watching him.

‘Yes, he did just that, sending me from Angband.’ And not for the last time. Sauron had ordered Vanimöré back to Endor before the destruction of Númenor. ‘It would take too much time to breed another like me, I suppose.’ He waved it away with a faint grimace. ‘As for Thuringwethil — if this creature is she — she is dangerous. If not, it is still dangerous.’ Then he stopped himself with a self-mocking smile.  
‘I apologise,’ he said formally. Elgalad was no tyro; he had been a warrior of the Wood for thousands of years. Not so long ago, he had been one of those who scaled the black walls of Carn Dûm to release Bainalph.*

Elgalad smiled. ‘All the more r-reason to hunt her down,’ he said. ‘And I well known, thou art restless w-with peace.’

‘That is no reason to place thee in danger. Thou couldst return to the Wood.’

‘My L-Lord,,’ Elgalad interposed, matching him in formality. ‘I love the Wood, but are those who believe I should remain in exile having chosen th-thee.’ He rose, and came to Vanimöré, leaning forward so that his hair spilled down like unfurling silver and the swan-wings earrings danced. He quickly dropped a kiss on Vanimöré’s brow before moving away leaving that lingering scent of white flowers and rain.

He was rarely so forward but Vanimöré had witnessed how Elgalad was different, more confident with others. It saddened him immeasurably, for how could there be such inequality in love? _And how could there not be? I raised him._ But he had hoped that the intervening years would have narrowed the gap.

And then, sometimes, with the cynical part of him that was all his father, he wondered if he were being played, if this diffidence was a lie. If so, Elgalad was a master. But when he looked into those water-clear, unfathomable eyes, he saw nothing.

‘I know th-those regions. They are north of Alphgarth.’

‘Very well,’ he acceded. ‘I am sorry that thou art not wholly welcome in thy home. It _is_ exile, more or less.’

‘I chose it,’ Elgalad told him. ‘I chose thee.’

OooOooO

* As told in Magnificat of the Damned Book III: Fire.


	2. ~ Strangers in the Wilds ~

  
  
  
  


**~ Strangers in the Wilds ~**

~ They did not hire horses for the journey.

‘Whatever this creature is, it seems to feed indiscriminately,’ Vanimöré said. ‘Better not to risk horses.’

They set out on foot in the dawn of a misty, windless day. Heavy pearls of moisture spangled leaf and grass. The Long Lake gleamed flat as poured pewter and woodsmoke rose grey into the grey sky.

The lands between the Ered Mithrim and the Great Wood were claimed by no-one. Geographically, it was not dissimilar to the great vale between Ered Gorgoroth and the north-march of Doriath, that had become Nan Dungortheb, _Where the sorcery of Sauron and the power of Melian came together, and horror and madness walked._ *  
Vanimöré had never seen Nan Dungortheb, but spoke to those who had: his father, Glorfindel, Aredhel, and Edenel, who had passed through with the _Ithiledhil_ before it became a land of horror. Even then, he said, it was a strange place of nascent power and shadows lurked at the dark feet of the Ered Gorgoroth.

There was something of the same atmosphere here. As the trapper had said, the Grey Mountains carried their own tales of hauntings which seemed to flow down and met the Greenwood’s ancient Elven power. Yet there was a wild beauty to the country. Drumlin hills, formed by glaciers in ancient times, were crowned with trees, waters ran down from the mountains and they were icy but clear. The grasslands between were rich, and in the spring and summer, a mass of wildflowers.

Now the heather was browning, the leaves turning and great skeins of wild geese flew overhead, the sound of their calls and wings speaking of even more distant lands, of lonely skies and the coming of winter.  
Game was plentiful and they harboured their supplies of dried meat and fruit. From groves of hazel trees they plucked ripe nuts and there was no lack of fresh water.

There was a road of sorts, though that was too grandiose a word for the rough track that often vanished into rock and heather. Trappers used it and a few adventurous traders who left signs on rock and tree marking good areas to set up camp.  
Since the War, with the orcs of the Misty Mountains fled or so diminished as to appear so, people had begun to look further abroad. West of Anduin, most traffic followed the river southward, past the Carrock and the Gladden Fields toward Rohan and Gondor, but a few adventurous folk chose the route East to Esgaroth, Dale and Erebor, northern gateways to the wealth out of Rhûn and Dorwinion.

Elgalad said that after the Battle of Five Armies Mithrandir and Bilbo Baggins had chosen to come this way, on their long journey back to the Shire. Even now, King Thranduil sent patrols out that sometimes ventured as far as the Ered Mithrim.

It was a good time of the year for travel. The two went light and fast often running for league upon league, pausing only to drink and to camp.

They were six days out of Esgaroth when they saw a the troop of riders and pack-ponies picking their way East. The debatable track ran rather closer to the forest than the mountains, as if leaning toward a possible protection. But the lands were quiet now, and the overcast had yielded to still, sunlit days. In the afternoons it even grew warm, the air hazy, a few leaves drifting down; autumn air, not the somnolent, insect-buzzing intoxication of summer.

‘Shall we ask to share their camp for the night?’ Vanimöré wondered and Elgalad, who had just brought down a grouse for their fire, nodded. The light was bleeding out of the sky, leaving a cool, clear pallor, and all the West was painted violet and rose.

The guards fell into stances of readiness as they approached and Vanimöré saw the trader’s relief when he identified them as Elves.

‘Halloo!’ the man called. ‘And well met!’

‘May we eat with thee?’ Vanimöré indicated the grouse. It was a law of the road to contribute to a meal if one shared a fire.

‘Aye, and welcome!’

‘Elgalad, of the Greenwood,’ Vanimöré introduced him. ‘And I am Vanimöré.’

They struck camp not far from a small stream in the lee of a low hill. The horses were watered, given nose-bags then hobbled to graze the autumn grass while Vanimöré and the guards gathered wood for the fire. Elgalad plucked the grouse and set it on a spit to turn. In the wide night, the fire seemed small and frail. Only the Greenwood border guards in their great sentinel trees would have seen it, a tiny spot of light under the autumn stars.

The trader named himself Aldred. He was young, tall and fair as were many of these northern folk. From these lands had ridden out Eorl the Young, south to the Battle of the Gladden Fields.

Aldred’s companions were Wulf and Osfrith and the fourth member of the party was no man, but a tall woman dressed in men’s gear. Since it was by far more practical for travel Vanimöré might have thought nothing of it but for the woman’s demeanour. It was one he had seen before and reminded him acutely of the seraglio he had inherited in Sud Sicanna. Those were women used to living at the whim of a cruel master and it showed in their constant vigilance. Thousands of years and miles from Sud Sicanna, Vanimöré recognised it in the young woman Aldred introduced as Britta, his cousin.

She was at ease with the men; whatever had happened to her could not be laid at their door. Vanimöré might have looked deeper, but considered it unforgivable except at times of great need.

Over cups of mead, Aldred volunteered that this was his first venture East. He was hoping to sell the lovely, silver-blue pearls of the mountain rivers in Esgaroth or Dale, even Erebor. And he was, interestingly enough, from Wrakyaburg. It was clear that they viewed Elves as strange, fey, but not enemies and were also glad to see them on this lonely journey.

‘It is late in the year to travel,’ Vanimöré remarked.

‘I hope to overwinter in Dale or Esgaroth,’ Aldred explained. ‘If I make any profit. And the lands are peaceful now.’ Yet, saying it, he looked back over his shoulder.

Aldred told that his father had advanced him a quarter of his promised legacy on the understanding that if it failed, it was lost. The Greylin and upper Anduin yielded peerless pearls and Aldred and his two friends had spent the spring harvesting. Some were sold or bartered with the Greenwood, but Aldred thought to take them further afield. Wulf and Osfrith looked to become partners in Aldred’s enterprise and see more of the world than their remote northern town.

‘There has b-been some trouble near Wrakyaburg, so we h-heard,’ Elgalad ventured. ‘Thou wert not concerned?’

Aldred shifted. ‘The Prince of Alphgarth sent out warriors and border guards and came himself a few times. Not often we saw them, being Elves you know.’ He flushed and coughed. ‘Well, you know. But they were around.’

Vanimöré lifted a brow at Elgalad who smiled faintly. The swan-wing earrings glinted and chimed as he looked down.  
‘Yes, B-Bainalph thought it his duty. Alphgarth lies almost d-directly south of Wrakyaburg.’

‘We were well-armed,’ said Wulf with all the earnest bravado of youth. ‘We took watches at night, and had dogs with us.’ They had, Vanimöré thought with an inner smile, found it exciting more than anything, save in the dark watches when the bark of a hill-fox or a shadow against the moon had made them long for the walls and fires of their town. He had never been so young, nor so full of hope.

‘And saw nothing?’

‘Nothing. Maybe we heard something, things we couldn’t rightly explain but, no.’

‘Elgalad and I will watch tonight,’ Vanimöré rose. ‘Thou canst sleep.’

OooOooO

~ Vanimöré’s mind ranged far into the night: the lope of foxes, the sweep of an owl’s wings, the light tread of deer and the scamper of mouse and shrew; from a distance, the scream of a wildcat. He sensed no danger, only the emanation of the forest to the south, like a breath of water and starlight and moving leaves.

The half-moon floated amid the first outliers of grey cloud chasing up from the south. The earlier clear chill of the night had grown milder, more humid and the trees on the hill caught the lifting breeze with poignant sighs. The wood-Elves called this the Time of Wild Winds before the quieter fog and frost that heralded winter.

The low moan did not rouse the sleeping men, but Vanimöré and Elgalad were instantly alert, heads turning. Elgalad nodded toward the wrapped form of Britta.

A pause, then a whisper of unintelligible words, and then a rising scream: ‘No! Leave me be! Get away from me!’ There was fear in it, but also rage that became a shriek.

 _Pain-shame-fear,_ then: _Shock, bone-crack-blood-splash, the hot upsurge of relief and revenge._

The men clawed out of their bedrolls, confused and alarmed. Britta had bolted upright, her face white in the night, her eyes black pits.

Vanimöré put wood on the slumbering fire. A flurry of sparks went up.

‘My cousin has nightmares,’ Aldred said uncomfortably, as they heated water. He placed a pouch of herbs in it to steep.

‘There is no need to apologise.’ Vanimöré murmured. _An image in her mind. Blurred and frozen by terror. Her mind was unguarded, and mine was open...I think she is, no, not running away, but leaving, and her cousin and friends are aiding her. Running from memories._

‘Valerian,’ Aldred said as the sharp, earthy scent of the herb rose in steam. ‘An old healer says it aids sleep and eases the mind.’

When it was brewed, Elgalad took it to Britta with a smile and a soft word.

‘I am sorry she needs it,’ Vanimöré murmured. ‘But with the rumours of a blood-drinker...I am not surprised.’

He saw the woman’s head lift abruptly, then she rose and walked to the edge of the firelight, the cup still in her hands.

 _Thou couldst find out what troubles her,_ Elgalad suggested.

 _An invasion of her privacy,_ Vanimöré reproved.  
‘We are headed for Wrakyaburg,’ he said aloud. ‘I have an interest in hunting such creatures.’

He felt their attention focus on him, saw their consternation as heads turned to one another. Aldred drew in a breath and was clearly struggling with something but it was Britta who spoke.  
‘You are going to Wrakyaburg?’

‘We are.’

She walked a little way toward the fire. ‘Is it necessary to mention you met us — me — sir?’ Her voice came choppy, high.

‘Not at all.’

Her cousin huffed out a breath. ‘You see, we are escorting Britta—‘ She snapped a glare at him and he spread his hands.

‘Thou didst see something,’ Vanimöré said quietly to her. ‘But that is not it, is it?’ And, because it mattered, but with distaste, he gave a soft mental _push._

Again, Aldred started to speak, but Britta cut him off with a slice of one hand. With the other, she tossed the dregs of the tea into the fire which hissed and spat.

‘It killed my husband,’ she said.

Her husband, the man who had seduced her at one spring fair two years before when she was but seventeen and feeling her own stirrings of sexuality and dreams of romance. Her father would never have permitted the match, Odel being twenty years older and a widow with a distant steading.

To Vanimöré it was not an uncommon tale: the man, experienced, roughly charming, plying a young girl with ale and tossing up her skirts in some sheltered corner. She got with child and it was the law of Wrakyaburg that a man must marry the woman if such a thing occurred.

But Odel was a bully, a man who liked to keep his woman like a slave, and vented his anger often and easily. It was nothing but rape after the first time and it was not even drink with him, though he liked it well enough. A black worm eating his brain, as the old healers had it.

She lost the child through such a beating, though early enough for it not to damage her physically. After, the abuse worsened. Yes, she had tried to leave, to go back to the town, but Odel virtually imprisoned her. Her father had visited, and Aldred, once, but it was a two day ride and they had their own lives and work. When Odel went into the town he made excuses as to why his wife did not accompany him.

And so, to the day she remembered and wanted to leave behind.

‘I was out with the hens, gatherings eggs. It was a beautiful morning...’

Odel had come upon her for no reason other than that he woke hard and wanted sex. She had turned away and he grabbed her hair. She struggled, spilling eggs from her basket.

There was a rush of air, a blur and something came on him. It knocked him to the ground. Not a beast, a _man_ , except ‘It looked like you,’ she said to Elgalad and Vanimöré. ‘It struck him across the face, and then lowered its head.’ Like a kiss, but a most deadly one.

She had sat frozen among the broken eggs on the green turf and watched Odel thrash and then become still; she smelt the reek of his bowels opening. The thing’s black hair tumbled over him.

At last it rose. She saw a face, white save for a streak of blood at the lips, and gleaming teeth. It wiped a hand across its mouth and then lowered it to her. She was numb...the green of the grass, the egg yolk splotched yellow, the hand, strong and alive, lifting her, and then it — he — was gone but Odel lay there, a look of surprise on his face. His pale, pale, face, with two dark wounds in the skin of his neck.

It was utterly quiet. The sun poured down from a cloudless sky, hot on her bare head.

He was dead.

 _Wasn’t he_?

Her mind, reeling, shattered by shock, remembered old tales, listened to by round-eyed children, by herself, on winter nights. Skeletal things that crawled out of the mist, that disinterred graves...Since the blood-drinker’s attacks, those stories had been whispered anew.

The little pasture was rocky. Questing, she found a stone the size of two fists, and looking down at the man who had taken and broken her innocence in his brutal hands, whom she loathed, she brought it down on his face. Something cracked and she flinched and screamed, eyesight blurring, then smashing down again and again until emotion ran out of her and she stood panting, tears streaming down her cheeks. The rock and her hands were red. The face had vanished in bloody pulp. She dropped the rock, turned away and heaved up the contents of her stomach. There was not much but she retched up sour bile until her stomach muscles ached.

And then, she buried him. The turf was still moist from the spring rains, and she dug a shallow grave and rolled him into it, covering him over with earth and rocks. She knew she must report his death. It was a two day journey to Wrakyaburg and the thought of travelling alone at night was terrifying. The creature had not attacked her, had even helped her to her feet, but perhaps its appetite had been sated. She scanned the treeline that sheltered the house and outbuildings. There was birdsong again, but the calls seemed to her to be warnings, and night would come. She dreaded the journey, but even more the thought of remaining here alone.

And, beyond reason, she reacted reflexively. She returned to the house, poured herself a cup of mead and gulped it down. The next thing she remembered was taking Odel’s pony and riding it away.

Gaps in memory can be merciful. She supposed she rode, stopped, ate dried meat and fruit and slept until she came upon two hunters coming down from the hills. To them she told her tale. They accompanied her back to the town.

‘I let them think,’ she said. ‘That the creature attacked him.’

‘She only told me at first,’ Aldred added. ‘And that not for a time.’

He was fond of his cousin and unhappy with her marriage, not through jealousy but because there was something in the man, Odel, that raised the hackles on his neck. He was too old for Britta and had worn out two wives. Apparently they had died of sickness out in his lonely steading, but there was only his word for that and, the one time Aldred had visited, seeing her subdued and pale, his suspicions had grown. But Odel gave him no chance to speak to her alone.

Britta’s father had taken her back willingly enough, but she was still wan and quiet, her eyes too big for her thin face. It had taken patience to break through her barriers, to gain her trust, but when Aldred learned what had happened he asked her simply enough if she wished to leave with him when he journeyed East. It would have to be done secretly, he said, though no doubt the family would realise where she must have gone, But by that time, he doubted any would follow them. So Britta said she was returning to clear the steading which would lie empty until the town Master passed it to another holder. Aldred went with her, and Wulf and Osfrith met them there.

Britta had sewed herself men’s clothes, and Aldred bought an outgrown pair of boots and a warm winter cloak. They found, when cleaning the house, a stash of coin that Odel had hidden, dowry from his wives, they guessed, and what he was paid when wood-chopping in the winter. As far as Aldred was concerned, it was Britta’s. Odel had no living kin. She sewed it up into a cloth bag.

‘I do not mean to return,’ Britta said firmly, seeming calmer now she had told her story but with a haunted look still at the back of her eyes.

She could weave, sew and spin, tend to and butcher livestock, brew ale and mead, and had some knowledge of medicine. She could even read and write a little. With the coin from Odel, she hoped to make a new life for herself in Esgaroth or Dale.

‘We’ll stay there, if we can,’ Aldred said. ‘Until Britta is settled.’

Vanimöré nodded. ‘Dost thou have something to write on?’

Osfrith, who was dealing with the records, produced some worn vellum and ink and Vanimöré wrote.

‘Here, a list of the inns that are clean and reasonably priced in Dale and Esgaroth.’ He handed it over. ‘Stay away from the South Dockside unless thou wouldst wish to be robbed or worse. And call upon Edric at the House of the Red Vine in Vinter’s Street. He trades with Umbar and will no doubt be glad to deal with thee. His wife, Ilsura is a fine woman.’ He smiled at Britta. ‘She would certainly be worth talking to. She knows everyone in Esgaroth. Tell them Vanimöré and Elgalad send their regards.’

It was late, the sky overcast now, and the wind rising, singing a lonely dirge in the trees atop the hill. The fire was curling down, glowing a deep red in its heart.

They sought their beds again, but Vanimöré forestalled Britta with a quiet word. Quiet, but nonetheless the young men turned.  
‘My companion and I go to hunt this creature,’ he said. ‘And I would thank thee for thine actions after.’

‘Thank me?’ she almost stammered, but her eyes fixed on his with an almost painful intensity before dropping away.

‘Such things are rare, lady, sprung from a monster of ancient times. This is not she, for which we can all be glad. Her bite was poison and would kill within hours, but I do not know what her descendants, so to speak, might be capable of. It may indeed be that the dead might wake and walk and feed.’

Even in the dimness he saw the stain flush her face. ‘Then I did the right thing?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I might, myself, have burned the corpse to make doubly sure it would not rise.’

One hand went to her throat. Part of her had enjoyed it; there was a savage satisfaction in beating to pulp the face of the man who had abused her. And, Vanimöré thought, it was quite natural in the circumstances, yet the realisation some facet of her had taken dark pleasure in it sickened her. Only time would heal it.  
He said, softly. ‘Thou wert alone and in shock, far from any help and yet could _think_. Yes, it was well done, lady. Never think otherwise.’

Her eyes flashed up and he smiled faintly. It was all he could give her without revealing her secrets and there was no need for it. So he bowed his head as to a Queen, and turned away.

And the wind rose, and the fire died to red coals, like eyes of fire, watching in the night. ~

OooOooO

**Author's Note:**

> The first in a series of stories set in the time between the War of the Ring and the beginning of Dark Lands.  
>   
> Edric of Dale, who Vanimöré and Elgalad work for was first mention in Dark Lands. Chapter Four: The Road to Fate.  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/12840/chapters/16458


End file.
